It's a little bit awkward to see this treated as a "story" - the inferences drawn are based mainly on theory. Even later in the book we get to some possible problems with the "story." But there is some evidence behind it. The evenness of the cosmic background microwave radiation (CBMR? I think) [Edit: Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB. Nice to have a little time to check Wikipedia.] seems to be the oddest bit. Unlike matter, which clumps in galaxies, the CBMR is astonishingly evenly distributed.

The aspect that I think gave me the most trouble, studying this long ago in my astronomy class, is that the universe expands including its space, not "within" space. I kept wanting to know where the center is. Nope. No center. Just one big "loop" (in three dimensions) within which everything is getting further and further from everything else (unless gravity is making it clump locally.)

It seems that the beginning of everything was infinitesimally small. Even smaller than atoms and electrons? Is it still matter? Is it a thing? Or is it just a wave or vibration? We are all, everything is just vibration, is it not? That's why music affects us so much, and Hindu temples have gongs and bells which make your brain vibrate and feel refreshed. Roman Catholic Churches have bells too. Drums are used to great effect in many temples and times.

I've just visited Classical Greece where 3000 years ago, they designed theatres using Fibonacci mathematics, so that you could hear a pin drop on the back row.

It is wonderful and exciting. But when does a vibration become matter? Mass and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, I was told in my physics class. I am wondering??

_________________Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

It's a little bit awkward to see this treated as a "story" - the inferences drawn are based mainly on theory. Even later in the book we get to some possible problems with the "story."

A story about the where the cosmos came from is known as a cosmogony. Science is just about facts, while stories are about what people consider important and why. Tyson jumps between science and story to make the astronomy interesting and lively. That is why Tyson introduces Biblical allusions, first with this chapter title and then explaining that the creation of hadrons prevented the ultimate let there be light scenario.

In the beginning with his preface he says the book aims to explain our place in the universe. My experience with astronomers is that they lacks interest in really doing that, since explaining our place brings in issues of philosophical values and significance that are outside astronomy.

It seems that the beginning of everything was infinitesimally small. Even smaller than atoms and electrons? Is it still matter? Is it a thing? Mass and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, I was told in my physics class. I am wondering??

Very pertinent questions. There are people working on possibilities, but I haven't been impressed with any I have heard about. The fact is cosmologists are just scrolling backwards on a "video" that we have a small, thin slice of. They assume that things before worked as they do now, for good reason, except that when you get to the first micro-mili-femto-second, you can't scroll back anymore. We have so few clues where all that Big Bang came from that theorists are free to make stuff up within very wide parameters. And they do.

However, as best I can verify from the perspective of an interested lay observer who has mainly kept up his Scientific American subscription and mainly read the cosmology articles, the stuff Tyson is laying out has pretty good reason to be accepted. We will probably find out, at some point, that much of the story of the early events has to be revised due to added learning about, oh, maybe how gravity and quantum mechanics interact, (or something,) but there is a decent chance that it all happened just as he stated it.

My reason for suspicion goes back to something said to me by a tenured physics prof at U Michigan (i.e. no slouch) which was that any time a singularity appears in physics, something is wrong with the theory. A singularity is anything where infinity gets treated as a quantity because something (like width or temperature) is going to zero. An example is an infinitely dense concentration of matter at the center of a black hole. It turns out, due to relativistic effects at the "event horizon" (from the beyond of which we cannot get any information) the infinitely dense concentration isn't. The matter is still falling (from our perspective) and still can leak out by quantum fluctuations (Hawking radiation).

So the fact that scrolling backward just gets us to a singularity means there is probably something we don't yet know about how the process works. Let's see. Something we don't yet know about matter/energy at quadrillions of times the energy levels of anything we have any way of learning about. How could that possibly be the case? LOL.

Penelope wrote:

I've just visited Classical Greece where 3000 years ago, they designed theatres using Fibonacci mathematics, so that you could hear a pin drop on the back row.

Robert, you say that science is just about facts. It isn't, it is about theory and most likely 'meaning/outcome, based on the accumulation of facts, don't you think? Isn't this why the author is calling it a story?

They get things wrong sometimes. Well....a bit wrong. I think it seems a bit like making a jigsaw puzzle and sometimes science gets a piece in the wrong place so we can't make sense of the whole picture.

Of course, it isn't so drastic when we get the sums wrong as to 'how' we are here, but when we start to make up stories as to 'why' we are here.....and then start fighting and killing one another as to whose story is the truth......Trouble is, there might not be a reason why and that thought, is freeing to some people, but unbearable to others of us.

.....the truth is so often disconcerting....

Rafael Sabatini

_________________Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

you say that science is just about facts. It isn't, it is about theory and most likely 'meaning/outcome, based on the accumulation of facts, don't you think?

Well, that's always good for a lively discussion. Among wonks, anyway. Facts without a theoretical structure to give them meaning are, quite literally, random. But in science, the "meaning" comes from better ability to construct a (mental) model and figure out what the next questions are, and eventually to be able to make bridges and airplanes and skyscrapers and sewage treatment plants.

Penelope wrote:

when we start to make up stories as to 'why' we are here.....and then start fighting and killing one another as to whose story is the truth......Trouble is, there might not be a reason why and that thought, is freeing to some people, but unbearable to others of us.

Well, that's why we have epistemology, and why people should always put persuasion ahead of imposition, when it comes to moral and mystical truth. The problem comes when religion gets involved in ethnic solidarity, so that economics comes into play. Then you can even get Buddhists to kill people (as in Myanmar today). But it isn't really for the sake of "religious truth" and you should never believe anyone who says it is.

Here in England during the Reformation thousands of people were burned at the stake just for being Protestant and then later, thousands of Catholic suffered the same fate, or worse, not having done anything wrong except practice their faith the way they had been taught.

At least scientists can't be accused of such. However, I don't think a scientific mind, a religious mind, or an artistic mind are mutually exclusive. They need to be approached differently. I find it more difficult to think scientifically but I can certainly see the benefit in attempting to do so and in doing so lose the bias in my character towards the spiritual or intuitive.

So I am struggling on with this book. I don't even know whether I am comprehending what I'm reading. I am, however, trying. I can't help visualising this first chapter as a kind of cosmic firework display.

_________________Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

Robert, you say that science is just about facts. It isn't, it is about theory and most likely 'meaning/outcome, based on the accumulation of facts, don't you think?

Hi Penelope. Scientific theory, such as the theory of gravity or the theory of evolution or the theory of relativity, is closely linked to factuality, with the observation that no factual evidence exists that contradicts these theories and abundant evidence confirms them. Scientific theories are factual, even if all predictions involve probability. Your phrase “most likely 'meaning/outcome” is quite condensed. Many people regard meaning as related to human concerns, which is where stories get interesting, but the objective nature of scientific information disconnects its meaning from relevance to human life.

Penelope wrote:

Isn't this why the author is calling it a story?

I think he is calling it a story in order to claim that the astronomical explanation of the universe is a greater story than the story of Jesus Christ, which is the origin of his chapter title, The Greatest Story Ever Told. Christianity tells the story of creation in Genesis to explain why human beings are important and why we are immoral. But Tyson aims to replace the Christian fantasy with scientific knowledge. It is just quite hard, as Carl Sagan noted in his book Pale Blue Dot, to explain the story of why humans are significant in objective terms when the universe is so big and old.

Penelope wrote:

They get things wrong sometimes. Well....a bit wrong. I think it seems a bit like making a jigsaw puzzle and sometimes science gets a piece in the wrong place so we can't make sense of the whole picture.

Yes, the jigsaw puzzle piece in the wrong place is a good analogy for scientific theories that have anomalies. The hope of science is that the universe will prove to comply with elegant beautiful consistent mathematical laws, but the current state of astrophysics does not yet have such a theory of everything. I am more concerned where the jigsaw pieces are out of place in topics that matter to human concern, such as religion, climate change and politics. If we could somehow base our views on these topics on the objective truths of astronomy we might start to be more systematic.

Penelope wrote:

Of course, it isn't so drastic when we get the sums wrong as to 'how' we are here, but when we start to make up stories as to 'why' we are here.....and then start fighting and killing one another as to whose story is the truth......Trouble is, there might not be a reason why and that thought, is freeing to some people, but unbearable to others of us. .....the truth is so often disconcerting.... Rafael Sabatini

We can’t really avoid the why question. Even saying there is no reason or that we can’t know is still an explanation of sorts. I prefer to say as an answer to why we are here that in scientific thought the universe reflects upon itself in symbols, and that this complex activity means human flourishing is intrinsically good.

Here in England during the Reformation thousands of people were burned at the stake just for being Protestant and then later, thousands of Catholic suffered the same fate, or worse, not having done anything wrong except practice their faith the way they had been taught.

The idea that all the killing was just about abstract issues of religious belief is not tenable. Yes, many of the burnings of heretics (of both categories) were just about conscience, but mostly they were caught up in the fights about who could determine legitimacy of an heir, whether Rome or London had authority over the church, and whether the wealth of monasteries could be confiscated.

I don't mean to suggest that religion never becomes the cause of horrible doings, only that people who neglect the underlying economic tensions are fooling themselves.

Penelope wrote:

However, I don't think a scientific mind, a religious mind, or an artistic mind are mutually exclusive. They need to be approached differently. I find it more difficult to think scientifically but I can certainly see the benefit in attempting to do so and in doing so lose the bias in my character towards the spiritual or intuitive.

An interesting partition. It might interest you to know that a sociologist of religion has (roughly) identified the three categories you present with the Christian intuitions of Father (=science: authority of the immovability of fact), Son (=religion: authority of devotion to the common good), and Holy Spirit (=arts: authority of inner experience and its communal meaning).

As the cosmos continued to expand and cool, growing larger than the size of our solar system, the temperature dropped rapidly below a trillion degrees Kelvin.

A millionth of a second has passed since the beginning.

We are told that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But after reading the above, I'm reminded that actually everything in the universe has gone much faster than the speed of light at the beginning of time. Tyson doesn't explicitly state it here, but it's obvious since it currently takes light from the sun a little over 8 minutes to reach the earth - now contrast that with the rate of expansion described above. I don't know how these two facts regarding the speed of light are reconciled; perhaps we should be stating something like "Although everything in the universe at one point greatly exceeded the speed of light, currently nothing is able to do so."

It seems that the beginning of everything was infinitesimally small. Even smaller than atoms and electrons? Is it still matter? Is it a thing? Or is it just a wave or vibration?

In the first sentence of the book, Tyson describes how unimaginably small.

Quote:

In the beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence.

Later in this chapter, Tyson briefly wonders what happened before the big bang, while admitting "Astrophysicists have no idea."

Quote:

But what if the universe was always there, in a state or condition we have yet to identify...

That caught me because the singularity, that tiny point before the big bang, could be eternal. Why should we assume there was nothing before then and wonder how the singularity was created?

I think he is calling it a story in order to claim that the astronomical explanation of the universe is a greater story than the story of Jesus Christ, which is the origin of his chapter title, The Greatest Story Ever Told. Christianity tells the story of creation in Genesis to explain why human beings are important and why we are immoral. But Tyson aims to replace the Christian fantasy with scientific knowledge. It is just quite hard, as Carl Sagan noted in his book Pale Blue Dot, to explain the story of why humans are significant in objective terms when the universe is so big and old.

Yes, well said. I think it's Mr. Tulip who says on occasion that until science comes up with overarching stories or myths that inspire awe and common people can use for understanding, it will have little power over religion. This amazing story is one attempt at that. The story of evolution is another that can inspire awe as one considers a personal unbroken line of ancestors back to primordial life. Perhaps Tyson will have other such stories in this book.

However, as you imply, I doubt any scientific stories or "myths" can compete with an invisible powerful deity who is working to improve your life and grant eternal happiness.

I'm thinking of that song 'From a distance '. God is watching us,...... from a distance.

I think it is wrong to think that religious persecution always grew from political or economic ambitions. We are approaching November 5th . Guy Fawkes Night here in UK. It is horrific to contemplate that they were attempting to release the Catholics of England out of oppression. They didn't just try to eliminate Catholicism, they did it by inflicting the utmost suffering they could devise. And vice versa. It is sickening to contemplate.

I'm going on to the next chapter now because I am despairing at how we got the whole religion/greatest story ever told thing, so bloody wrong.

It has taken us 400 years to rise out of this religious mire, here in the U.K. It looks as though we are being dragged back down by Islamist fanatics.

_________________Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....

As the cosmos continued to expand and cool, growing larger than the size of our solar system, the temperature dropped rapidly below a trillion degrees Kelvin.

A millionth of a second has passed since the beginning.

We are told that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But after reading the above, I'm reminded that actually everything in the universe has gone much faster than the speed of light at the beginning of time.

I remember having the same question as I read this. There is a bit more on the issue, well intohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)but all it does is assert that things moved "beyond the event horizon" as the universe flew apart from itself at a speed which made some parts move away from other parts faster (relative to each other) than the speed of light. Not sure what Einstein would make of it, but it seems inflation is still not agreed on despite making several predictions which have been confirmed.

LanDroid wrote:

I don't know how these two facts regarding the speed of light are reconciled;

Well, neither do I. I could try getting Fred, in Michigan, to answer, but until he retires he is probably too busy.

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